In this innovative study, Joshua D. Garroway offers a revised account of the origin of the all-important Christian word "gospel," yielding significant new insights into the development of early Christian history and literature. Long thought to have originated on the lips of Jesus or his disciples, "gospel" was in fact coined by Paul midway through his career to describe his controversial new interpretation of Jesus' death and resurrection. For nearly a decade after the crucifixion, the thoroughly Jewish Jesus movement demanded circumcision and Law observance from Gentile converts. Only in the early 40s did Paul arrive at the belief that such observance was no longer necessary, an insight he dubbed "the gospel," or good news. The remainder of Paul's career featured clashes with authorities over the legitimacy of the gospel, debates that continued after his death in the writings of Mark, Matthew, and Luke-Acts. These writings obscured the original context of the gospel, however, and in time the word lost its specific association with Paul and his scandalous notion of salvation outside the Law.

This book examines the views of Greek Church Fathers on hoarding, saving, and management of economic surplus, and their development primarily in urban centres of the Eastern Mediterranean, from the late first to the fifth century. The study shows how the approaches of Greek Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Isidore of Pelusium, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, to hoarding and saving intertwined with stances toward the moral and social obligations of the wealthy. It also demonstrates how these Fathers responded to conditions and practices in urban economic environments characterized by sharp inequalities. Their attitudes reflect the gradual widening of Christian congregations, but also the consequences of the socio-economic evolution of the late antique Eastern Roman Empire. Among the issues discussed in the book are the justification of wealth, alternatives to hoarding, and the reception of patristic views by contemporaries.

Following the interest in recent years in Celtic spirituality, Paul Cavill's book looks at the impact of Christianity on the pagan Germanic peoples who invaded Britain from the 5th century onwards. Drawing on historical and archeological evidence, he paints a vivid picture of Anglo-Saxon culture and belief, contrasting this with the Celtic world view, and explaining how the powerful warrior code of the Anglo-Saxon peoples became merged with new Christian values. Quotes from Anglo-Saxon literature include the epic "Beowulf", and "The Dream of the Rood" along with Caedmon's "Hymn to Creation", a translation of Psalm 136 and numerous miracle stories.

St. Augustine's masterpiece is an interpretation of history in terms of the struggle between good and evil: the City of God in conflict with the City of the Devil. Abridged for the modern reader.

A study of the early history of the Evangelical Movement in the Church of England in the 18th century, showing how evangelicalism was distinct from the Methodist revival under Wesley and Whitefield. The author calls it "a religious and social study", placing the movement in its historical setting and taking note especially of the influences which affected it.

The Slave Metaphor and Gendered Enslavement in Early Christian Discourse adds new knowledge to the ongoing discussion of slavery in early Christian discourse. Kartzow argues that the complex tension between metaphor and social reality in early Christian discourse is undertheorized. A metaphor can be so much more than an innocent thought figure; it involves bodies, relationships, life stories, and memory in complex ways. The slavery metaphor is troubling since it makes theology of a social institution that is profoundly troubling. This study rethinks the potential meaning of the slavery metaphor in early Christian discourse by use of a variety of texts, read with a whole set of theoretical tools taken from metaphor theory and intersectional gender studies, in particular. It also takes seriously the contemporary context of modern slavery, where slavery has re-appeared as a term to name trafficking, gendered violence, and inhuman power systems.

Moving past earlier descriptions of first-century Christ groups that were based on examining the New Testament in isolation from extant sources produced by analogous cult groups throughout Mediterranean antiquity, this book engages with underexplored epigraphic and papyrological records and situates the behaviour of Paul's Corinthian ekklesia within broader patterns of behaviour practised by Greco-Roman associations. Richard Last's comparative analysis generates highly original contributions to our understanding of the social history of the Jesus movement: he shows that the Corinthians were a small group who had no fixed meeting place, who depended on financial contributions from all ten members in order to survive, and who attracted recruits by offering social benefits such as crowns and office-holding that made other ancient cult groups successful. This volume provides a much-needed robust alternative to the traditional portrayal of Pauline Christ groups as ecclesiastically egalitarian, devoid of normative honorific practices, and free for the poor.

The first full-length study to trace how early Christians came to perceive Jesus as a sinless human being. Jeffrey S. Siker presents a taxonomy of sin in early Judaism and examines moments in Jesus' life associated with sinfulness: his birth to the unwed Mary, his baptism by John the Baptist, his public ministry - transgressing boundaries of family, friends, and faith - and his cursed death by crucifixion. Although followers viewed his immediate death in tragic terms, with no expectation of his resurrection, they soon began to believe that God had raised him from the dead. Their resurrection faith produced a new understanding of Jesus' prophetic ministry, in which his death had been a perfect sacrificial death for sin, his ministry perfectly obedient, his baptism a demonstration of perfect righteousness, and his birth a perfect virgin birth. This study explores the implications of a retrospective faith that elevated Jesus to perfect divinity, redefining sin.

By linking together a series of brilliantly chosen texts from the early centuries of the Church, the author lays bare the roots of the deeply mystical spirituality that has flourished among Christians throughout the ages. This is a book that will appeal to anyone who is interested in the field of spirituality; it is a masterly contribution to Christian scholarship. Clement's scholarly exposition of the mysticism of the Fathers, already regarded as a modern classic, is now in its third edition.

Letter collections in late antiquity give witness to the flourishing of letter-writing, with the development of the mostly formulaic exchanges between elites of the Graeco-Roman world to a more wide-ranging correspondence by bishops and monks, as well as emperors and Gothic kings. The contributors to this volume study individual collections from the first to sixth centuries CE, ranging from the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline letters through monastic letters from Egypt, bishops' letter collections and early papal collections compiled for various purposes. This is the first multi-authored study of New Testament and late antique letter collections, crossing the traditional divide between these disciplines by focusing on Latin, Greek, Coptic and Syriac epistolary sources. It draws together leading scholars in the field of late antique epistolography from Australasia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

This volume presents for the first time in the Fathers of the Church series the work of an early Christian writer who did not write in either Greek or Latin. It offers new English translations of selected prose works by St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. A.D. 309-373). The volume contains St. Ephrem's Commentary on Genesis, Commentary on Exodus, Homily on Our Lord, and Letter to Publius. The translators have enhanced the volume with a general introduction, extensive bibliography, and specific introductions to each of the works. Together these features provide an overview of the major scholarship on St. Ephrem and Syriac Christianity. St. Ephrem, the "Harp of the Spirit," composed prose commentaries and sermons of skilful charm and grace, in addition to beautiful hymns, during the time he spent teaching at his native Nisibis and at Edessa in Syria. In the two commentaries presented here, Ephrem focuses only on portions of the sacred text that had a particular theological significance for him, or whose orthodox interpretation needed to be reasserted in the face of contemporary heterodox ideas. He does not provide a continuous, verse by verse exposition. The elaborate rhetorical figures and stylistic devices of the Homily on Or Lord and Letter to Publius succeed in creating language and imagery nearly as striking as Ephrem's poetry. St. Ephrem marshaled his considerable theological and rhetorical talent to challenge the appeal that the doctrines of the Arians, Manicheans, Marcionites, and the followers of Bardaisan might have had to the minds and hearts of Syrian Christians. In the face of their rational systems, his was the voice that insisted on the incomprehensibility of the divine nature.

Lynn Cohick provides an accurate and fulsome picture of the earliest Christian women by examining a wide variety of first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman documents that illuminate their lives. She organizes the book around three major spheres of life: family, religious community, and society in general. Cohick shows that although women during this period were active at all levels within their religious communities, their influence was not always identified by leadership titles nor did their gender always determine their level of participation. The book corrects our understanding of early Christian women by offering an authentic and descriptive historical picture of their lives. Includes black-and-white illustrations from the ancient world.

Hippolytus (c.160 235 AD) occupies a unique place in Christian history as a schismatic bishop who is now honoured by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint and martyr. Originally published in 1934, this book contains an English translation of Hippolytus' Apostolic Tradition, which was thought to have been composed around 215 AD, and which describes early Christian practice and liturgy in detail. Easton also includes notes on the text and a detailed introduction on the history of the text and other comparable liturgical records. This important text will be of great value to anyone with an interest in the early Church and early Christian liturgy."

Charles E. Raven (1885 1964) was a British theologian who held the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University. In this book, which was first published in 1923, Raven presents a discussion of the Christology of the early Church, focusing on the idea of Christ's divinity originated by Apollinarius of Laodicea. The process of writing the text caused Raven to reassess his views on this area, moving him towards 'the conviction that Apollinarianism both in its ancient and its modern form was untenable'. Detailed notes are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in theology, the history of Christianity and Apollinarianism."

New edition of, and commentary on, one of the most important liturgical books to have come down to us from the late Anglo-Saxon church. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 579, the so-called 'Leofric Missal', is for the most part not really a missal, but a late-ninth or early-tenth-century combined sacramentary, pontifical and ritual with cues for the sung parts of various masses by the original, possibly French or Lotharingian, scribe. Subsequently, over the course of a hundred and thirty or so years, the sacramentary-pontifical-ritual was considerably augmented, first most probably for thesuccessors of Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury (890-923), the man for whom it was probably originally compiled, then later at Exeter for Bishop Leofric (1050-72).

Along with his Confessions, The City of God is undoubtedly St. Augustine's most influential work. In the context of what begins as a lengthy critique of classic Roman religion and a defence of Christianity, Augustine touches upon numerous topics, including the role of grace, the original state of humanity, the possibility of waging a just war, the ideal form of government, and the nature of heaven and hell. But his major concern is the difference between the City of God and the City of Man - one built on love of God, the other on love of self. One cannot but be moved and impressed by the author's breadth of interest and penetrating intelligence. For all those who are interested in the greatest classics of Christian antiquity, The City of God is indispensable. This long-awaited translation by William Babcock is published in two volumes, with an introduction and annotation that make Augustine's monumental work approachable. Books 11-22 offer Augustine's Christian view of history, including the Christian view of human destiny. The INDEX for Books 1-22 (both volumes of The City of God) is contained in this edition.

The writings of AElfric of Eynsham (c.950-c.1010) are among the most important to survive from Anglo-Saxon England. He was shaped by tenth-century monastic reform, and his promotion of Old English was highly influential. His earliest known works, the Sermones Catholici (c.990-5), are adaptations of Latin texts rendered in Old English. The homilies draw on the gospels, saints' lives and other doctrinal themes. They were intended to be delivered over two years. This two-volume collection, first published between 1844 and 1846, contains transcriptions of the Old English texts with facing-page translations by Benjamin Thorpe (1781/2-1870). A well-respected scholar with a strong interest in promoting the study of Old English, Thorpe produced an important edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the Rolls Series (also reissued in this series). Volume 1 of the present work contains the sermons for the first year, focusing on important events in the church calendar.

The writings of AElfric of Eynsham (c.950-c.1010) are among the most important to survive from Anglo-Saxon England. He was shaped by tenth-century monastic reform, and his promotion of Old English was highly influential. His earliest known works, the Sermones Catholici (c.990-5), are adaptations of Latin texts rendered in Old English. The homilies draw on the gospels, saints' lives and other doctrinal themes. They were intended to be delivered over two years. This two-volume collection, first published between 1844 and 1846, contains transcriptions of the Old English texts with facing-page translations by Benjamin Thorpe (1781/2-1870). A well-respected scholar with a strong interest in promoting the study of Old English, Thorpe produced an important edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the Rolls Series (also reissued in this series). Volume 2 of the present work contains the sermons for the second year, focusing on doctrine and church history.

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. "Through the Eye of a Needle" is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.

Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven.

"Through the Eye of a Needle" challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.

In general, theological terms this study examines the interplay of early Christian understandings of history, revelation, and identity. The book explores this interaction through detailed analysis of appeals to "mystery" in the Pauline letter collection and then the discourse of previously hidden but newly revealed mysteries in various second-century thinkers. T.J. Lang argues that the historical coordination of the concealed/revealed binary ("the mystery previously hidden but presently revealed") enabled these early Christian authors to ground Christian claims - particularly key ecclesial, hermeneutical, and christological claims - in Israel's history and in the eternal design of God while at the same time accounting for their revelatory newness. This particular Christian conception of time gives birth to a new and totalizing historical consciousness, and one that has significant implications for the construction of Christian identity, particularly vis-a-vis Judaism.

This book brings the Cappadocian Fathers to life and explores their contributions to subsequent Christian thought. Melding together a thematic and individualized approach, the book examines Cappadocian thought in relation to Greek philosophy and the musings of other Christian thinkers of the time. The volume is unique in that it details the Cappadocian legacy upon the three central divisions of Christianity, rather than focusing on one confession. Providing a multifaceted assessment of the spirituality and beliefs of the fourth-century Church, contributors interweave historical studies into their philosophical and theological discussions. The volume draws together an international team of scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds including philosophy, theology, and Classics. The contributors bring their unique perspectives to bear on their analysis of the Cappadocians' theological contributions. Special attention is given to the Cappadocians' influence on pneumatology, Christology, and ethics. The Ecumenical Legacy of the Cappadocians sets the Cappodocians' theoretical views in relief against the political and historical background of their day, enlivening and vivifying the analysis with engaging biographical sketches.

Originally published in 1931, The World of the New Testament by T. R. Glover was included in the Cambridge Miscellany series in 1933. It is the 'Miscellany' edition which is re-issued here. The purpose of the volume was to offer the student of the New Testament a description of the society in which the Early Church found itself, of the political conditions which had made the Roman Empire, and of the everyday life of the people.

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"The selections recapture the drama and counter-cultural nature of becoming a Christian and creating a community that stood out from the crowd...This collection offers easy access to early Christianity's daily life."
-- "The Princeton Seminary Bulletin"

Life and Practice in the Early Church brings together a range of primary texts from the church's first five centuries to demonstrate how early Christians practiced their faith. Rather than focusing on theology, these original documents shed light on how early believers "did church," addressing such practical questions as, how did the church administer baptism? How were sermons delivered? How did the early church carry out its missions endeavors?

Early Christian writings reveal a great deal about the tradition, as well as the wider culture in which it developed. Far from being monolithic, the documents which present the voices of the early church fathers in their own words demonstrate variation and diversity regarding how faith was worked out during the patristic period. The texts illuminate who was eligible for baptism, what was expected of worshippers, how the Eucharist was celebrated, and how church offices and their functions were organized. Contextual introductions explain practices and their development for those with little prior knowledge of Christian history or tradition. The pieces included here, all in accessible English translation, represent such sources as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.

The catacombs of Rome have captured imaginations for centuries. This innovative study takes a fresh look at these underground spaces, and considers how art, space, texts, and practices can tell us more about the catacombs and the people who dug and decorated them.

Steve D. Fraade offers a new translation, with notes, and detailed commentary to the Dead Sea Scroll most commonly called the Damascus Document, based on both ancient manuscripts from caves along the western shore of the Dead Sea, and medieval manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza. The text is one of the longest and most important of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its importance derives from several aspects of its contents: its extensive collections of laws, both for the sectarian community that authored it and for the rest of Israel; some of the oldest examples of scriptural interpretation, both legal and narrative, both implicit and explicit, with important implications for our understanding of the evolving status of the Hebrew canon; some of the clearest expressions, often in hortatory form, of the community's self-understanding as an elect remnant of Israel that understands itself in dualistic opposition to the rest of Israel, its practices, and its leaders; important expressions of the community's self-understanding as a priestly alternative to the sacrificial worship in the Jerusalem Temple; expressions of an apocalyptic, eschatological understanding of living as the true Israel in the "end of days;" important expressions of attitudes toward woman, sexual activity, and marriage; importance for our understanding of ancient modes of teaching and of ritual practice; importance for the study of the history of the Hebrew language and its scribal practices. The volume contains a substantial introduction, dealing with these aspects of the Damascus Document and locating its place within the Dead Sea Scrolls more broadly as well as the historical context of ancient Judaism that gave rise to this text.